By , July 01, 2022.

Study on Ancillary Copyright Protections for Publishers — The US Copyright Office this week issued its policy study on the “viability of establishing ‘ancillary copyright’ protections for press publishers, similar to protections now being implemented in Europe, that would require online news aggregators to pay publishers for excerpts of content they provide for others to view.” The Office ultimately concluded “that adopting an EU-like right is unnecessary inasmuch as U.S. law already confers many of the same rights on press publishers, including via the work-made-for-hire doctrine.”

Virtual Event | What the New Copyright Claims Board Means for Creators — You can catch video of the event here, with Hudson Institute’s Devlin Hartline speaking with Maya Burchette of the Copyright Claims Board, Terrica Carrington of the Copyright Alliance, and attorney Michael Klipper about the recently launched copyright small claims court.

Pirate Site Blocking Expands to Kenya with Landmark Court Order — Kenya becomes the first African nation to join a growing group of jurisdictions that have found site-blocking to be a legitimate and effective remedy for addressing certain types of online piracy.

MapLab: The Legacy of Copyright Traps — The first part of this Bloomberg newsletter delves into efforts by mapmakers and dictionary publishers (among others) to detect misappropriation of their highly factual and functional works: the insertion of phony entries that would reveal when a competitor copied from them rather than primary sources.

Pyrotechnics Management v. FireTek [PDF] — Just in time for the Fourth of July weekend, the Third Circuit issued a decision involving copyrightability of software interfaces used to control firework displays. It is of some note to see a post-Google v. Oracle Circuit Court decision on software interface copyrightability that does not cite to Google v. Oracle.